Her husband, Joe, a bodybuilder she recently married during a 10-day Virgin Islands vacation, owned the thriving, high-tech shop on busy Concord Pike in Talleyville. She drove a $100,000 baby-blue Mercedes sedan and wore expensive jewels.

Joe and his lanky partner, Chris Rivers – Irish Catholic guys from local families – had parlayed their connections and skill as mechanics to become successful entrepreneurs in their 30s. The partners seemingly had a bright, lucrative future together.

Rivers, whose girlfriend had just given birth to a boy, was strung out on cocaine and painkillers, becoming increasingly erratic and paranoid, according to court records, law enforcement and friends.

Connell, trying to turn his life around after spending six years in prison on a gun charge, used black-market steroids he kept at the shop to pump up his sculpted physique.

The partners had a hefty mortgage and other debts. Even though by one employee's estimate the shop brought in upwards of $50,000 a month, the cost of running the business and their excessive spending put them on shaky financial ground.

Joe and Olga worried about Rivers' partying and stability. But Rivers told people the ex-con he welcomed into his business was ripping him off to fuel a high-flying lifestyle.

'Massacre' at Paladin Club

Focus on partner

The simmering conflicts exploded in the most brutal way in the dead of night in September 2013, when authorities say two gunmen fired several bullets into the Connells' heads as they returned from a Wilmington restaurant where they celebrated Olga's 39th birthday.

The scene in front of the couples apartment the night of the murders. (Photo: WILLIAM BRETZGER/THE NEWS JOURNAL)

Joseph and Olga Connell worked at C&S Automotive in Talleyville with business partner Chris Rivers who was later charged with hiring a hit man to kill the couple. (Photo: DAMIAN GILETTO/The News Journal)

The close-range killings mutilated the victims' faces, sources said. Joe's mother called it "a massacre." New Castle County Police Chief Elmer Setting said the crime scene was "quite disturbing."

While the newlyweds' slayings generated rumors that the Russian mafia killed the Connells because of unpaid debts, police and prosecutors focused on Rivers, who had told The News Journal days after the killings he would never have harmed "my best friend" or his bride.

Last month, nearly a year after the Connells' bodies were found in the bushes in front of their Paladin Club condominium just north of Wilmington, authorities made arrests.

CRIME SCENE(Photo: DAN GARROW/THE NEWS JOURNAL)

Detectives descended on C&S and took Rivers into custody, charging him with masterminding the double-murder plot through a former FBI informant and two hit men known to collect $10,000 to kill people with bounties on their heads in Wilmington.

The ex-informant and one of the alleged contract killers, both gun felons from Wilmington, also were arrested. Still at large, though, is one of the accused, unnamed hit men.

The plot unfolded just outside Wilmington in a state where many delude themselves into thinking the pricey suburbs are insulated from the murders in impoverished urban blocks just a few miles away. For these killings, the two worlds allegedly converged to extinguish the life of a couple who were so in love.

A possible motive, court records show, was Joe Connell's nearly $1 million life insurance policy, of which Rivers was the sole beneficiary.

Downward spiral

'Like something on 'The Sopranos'

Despite his clean-cut appearance, privileged background and private education at Salesianum School, Rivers had frequently run afoul of the law and was spiraling downward on drugs while trying to project the image of a hard-driving businessman, the newspaper found.

Rivers allegedly tried to concoct the perfect crime, which occurred while he watched television in bed with his girlfriend as she ate a Big Mac and fries as their baby slept. Rivers thought he had an iron-clad alibi while hired assassins carried out his murderous, bloody work, court records show.

Pub owner Michael McLaren, who was friendly with Rivers and his father, said the ever-evolving case seems surreal.

"It's like something on 'The Sopranos.' "

Joseph Mallon, who worked at the shop and said he watched Rivers plunge further into the depths of drug abuse and manic behavior, said the saga is like a movie.

"But there's nothing pretty about it. It's an ugly kill. Everything about this is ugly."

CLOSE

Kelly Connell talks about brother Joe Connell and his wife, Olga, who were killed allegedly by two hit men hired by his business partner.

'Daddy's girl' meets ex-con

'Everything that I was dreaming about.'

When Joe Connell and Olga Raitan first saw photos of each other on an online dating service in the fall of 2010, the attraction was instantaneous.

Connell sent Olga a message that said, "I have never seen anybody more beautiful than you,'' recalled her friend Natallia Herzog.

Olga showed Herzog her a photo of the smiling, well-built stranger. "He's so pretty," Olga said.

Herzog, a native of Belarus who lives in Brandywine Hundred and had befriended Olga in 2006, cautioned: "He has a handsome face but might be a bad person."

Joseph Connell and his wife Olga are shown in an undated photo. A trial is underway for two men accused of killing the couple.(Photo: SUBMITTED PHOTO)

Before they made a date, Joe sent Olga a message that startled her, saying he didn't "want to start anything with a lie,'' and revealed he had been in prison for six years.

Herzog assured Olga there was no harm in meeting this new man in public.

Their first date was at Bellevue State Park, where they spent hours getting acquainted at the former du Pont family estate.

Afterward, Olga gushed, "I fell in love with that man. He's everything that I was dreaming about."

Connell's kid sister Kelly said the feeling was mutual. "I never saw him fall in love like that."

Failed mail-order marriage

Olga adjusts to single life

For the new couple, the budding romance was a chance at redemption.

Olga was an intelligent woman with a university degree in chemistry and physics who was rebounding from a failed marriage.

Growing up in Chita, a city of 325,000 people in south-central Russia, she yearned to move to America. She became a mail-order bride, marrying a Delaware engineer named Kemal Helmi in 2006.

The couple spent only a week together, meeting in his native Turkey with family chaperones, before he proposed. After a honeymoon in Hawaii, they moved into his parents' house in Brandywood, a neighborhood of spacious homes off Foulk Road.

The union didn't last, and they divorced amicably in 2010. Friends said Helmi wasn't comfortable socializing or meeting strangers – in contrast to Olga, who loved shopping, fine dining with friends and traveling. Helmi, who is now living in Texas, declined to be interviewed.

Olga stayed in the spacious, one-bedroom Paladin Club condo they had bought for $127,900 in November 2009. She worked at the fragrance counter at Macy's and also bought and sold stocks online, Herzog said.

While adjusting to single life in her adopted country, she found a new mate in Connell, who had just finished a long stint at Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington.

Bar fight and a shotgun

Six-year sentence

In 2003, when he was a 29-year-old mechanic living with a girlfriend and her two children, Connell was in a bar fight at Tailgates in Ogletown.

His family said Connell was stabbed after he was jumped by several guys flirting with his girlfriend and the brawl spilled out into the parking lot.

Connell(Photo: Police mug)

That's where a state trooper found Connell holding a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun and pointing the weapon at him, court files show. The trooper pulled out his handgun and ordered Connell to drop the weapon, but Connell returned to his car with the shotgun, records show.

Connell drove away, but the trooper pulled him over and tried to handcuff Connell, who "began fighting and kicking,'' records said. Connell also had five 12-gauge shotgun shells, records showed, and he was charged with two counts each of aggravated menacing and possession of a firearm during a felony, plus resisting arrest.

Connell, who had never been in trouble before, rejected a plea offer to serve no more than two years in prison, his family said. He gambled that he would be exonerated at trial, only to be found guilty of all charges in 2004.

His mother, Mickie, who sat through the trial, said the gun was unloaded. The gun convictions, however, carried mandatory time, and the judge gave Connell six years behind bars.

Growing up in prison

'He came out like the Hulk'

Going to prison was a dramatic fall for Connell, a young man from a prosperous family.

Connell's father, Tom, owned the Gulf service station at Marsh and Wilson roads in Brandywine Hundred, and the family lived in a large stone colonial near Alapocas. Joe, the middle of three children, attended Immaculate Heart of Mary and Salesianum schools, graduating from Brandywine High.

Joe excelled at drumming, raced motocross bikes, and loved fishing and hunting. By his mid-20s he had a reputation as a skilled, reliable mechanic.

Yet rather than coming into his prime at age 31, Connell slept in a cell.

Initially depressed, he completed courses in anger management and other life skills, records showed. He had no disciplinary infractions, winning a bed in the "honor pod'' that gave him special privileges. He was a kitchen crew leader and later ran the fitness center, where he developed a love of weightlifting.

"He came out like the Hulk,'' Kelly Connell said.

Finally free in 2010, Connell landed a job with a friend who owns an auto body shop in Talleyville. Within months, someone suggested he go to nearby C&S, run by a another suburban Wilmington guy from a well-to-do family – Chris Rivers.

Catholic schoolkid courts trouble

Low-level probation

Christopher J. Rivers, eight years younger than Connell, is the son of a real estate agent and dental hygienist. He grew up in the comfortable neighborhood of Lindamere in Bellevue and graduated from Salesianum, the expensive all-boys Catholic school in Wilmington.

A tall, skinny kid with sharp features and an easy smile, Rivers didn't excel academically at Sallies or participate in sports or clubs. His grandfather taught him how to work on cars, a hobby he enjoyed.

During his senior year, though, 18-year-old Rivers picked up a felony charge.

The crime occurred in Graylyn Crest at a home his father, Thomas, rented with McLaren, who runs a family pub on Concord Pike where the elder Rivers often played pool and let Chris tag along.

Chris Rivers, who lived a few miles away with his mother, was an occasional visitor to his dad's home, McLaren said.

Police charged Rivers with felony burglary and misdemeanor theft, but in 2001 prosecutors let him plead to two lesser charges, criminal mischief and trespassing. A judge gave him low-level probation.

Though Rivers told a reporter last year he briefly attended Wilmington University to study business, a school official said Rivers enrolled in 2001 but never attended classes.

Rivers said he dropped out to get the auto repair business and soon became a partner with fellow mechanic Sean Terranova at the Oceanic service station in the 2800 block of Concord Pike, which was named C&S.

Mallon, then a customer, considered Rivers a solid mechanic who kept his old Jeep Wrangler on the road. "Every time I had something broken with my car, he fixed it," Mallon said.

Terranova said the shop did well, but a few years later he dissolved the partnership because Rivers, with whom he had used cocaine, was abusing drugs and doing deals at the shop.

Rivers also battled a drinking problem, court records showed, getting arrested twice from 2006 to 2008 for drunken driving and getting sentenced to 60 days in prison on the second offense.

Two mechanics join forces

Life insurance required

Connell went to work for Rivers sometime in 2010. And though they weren't the best of friends, as Rivers told The News Journal two weeks after the Connells' deaths, they clicked as mechanics.

Joe Connell (left) and Chris Rivers in a photo they had on the wall in their Talleyville shop. (Photo: Family photos)

After Connell started dating Olga, she also went to work at C&S, running the front desk and selling cigarettes, soda and candy.

Mallon said he initially didn't like Olga because of her heavy accent and lack of knowledge about the business, but soon changed his viewpoint. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, Mallon said Olga brought him solace.

"She was the first one to come to me and sit me down in a chair and start asking me questions. She said, 'Is there anything I can do?' " Mallon recalled. "That girl never didn't have a smile on her face. She never didn't say, 'Hello, Joe.' "

Connell and Rivers decided to become partners and paid just shy of $1 million for a former Precision Tune building at 3805 Concord Pike, converting the space into a state-of-the-art shop with four bays. As a condition of mortgage financing, Connell's mother said, they had to purchase a joint life insurance policy for $977,500, with each other as beneficiary.

Customers flocked to the new shop, which opened in late 2012.

Jewels, getaways and pricey car

'He needed to have the best'

While C&S did brisk business, Rivers and Connell were on opposite paths outside of work.

When Connell wasn't at C&S or pumping iron at Retro Fitness in Concord Mall, he was with Olga, now his fiancée.

Olga wasn't happy when she learned in 2013 that her man used steroids, her friend Herzog said, but appreciated that he took care of his body. She didn't consider steroids a "drug drug" – one that people took to get intoxicated, Herzog said.

He moved into the condo, where they cooked gourmet meals. They traveled to New York, the Poconos and Florida, where they went deep-sea fishing in the Keys. They spent $4,000 on his-and-her Movado wristwatches, Herzog said.

They were regulars at Philadelphia's Russian food market, where they brought caviar and other staples from her homeland.

He bought a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle for about $20,000 and sold that to put money down on a $100,000-plus 2011 Mercedes SL550. Connell spent closer to $75,000 for the luxury sedan, friends and relatives said, but many thought it excessive for a guy just getting started in business.

Kelly said her brother seemed to be trying to recapture lost time with his spending spree, which also included an older Mercedes, another Harley and a pickup truck.

"He decided he was going to have everything. He needed to have the best,'' she said. "He used to say to me, 'I think it will take us a year or more to start profiting but we're real busy."

Unpaid bills and a drug habit

Cocaine and painkillers

While Connell spent lavishly, Rivers had a history of not paying shop bills and personal debts, court records showed.

In 2012, a candy and cigarettes vendor who supplied the former Oceanic shop won a $128,000 judgment against C&S and Rivers, and the owner of that property won a $15,000 judgment for back rent. Connell was not named in those lawsuits.

And in August 2013, a credit union sued Rivers for $28,000, claiming he had defaulted on a personal loan.

Some friends of the partners now say that Rivers got behind on bills because he was spending hundreds of dollars a day on cocaine and the addictive narcotic oxycodone. Their observations amplified what police said in court papers, that he had "an addiction to prescription drugs as well as other illicit substances."

Rivers, who in 2008 had bought the Graylyn Crest home he once burglarized, remained strung out on drugs, friends and police records said, even as he and his girlfriend, Lauren Gorman, were celebrating the birth of their son in the spring of 2013.

Gorman, a native of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, had dated Rivers for a few years, she told a reporter last year. She would not agree to an interview for this story.

Mallon said he did a lot of bar-hopping with Rivers, and took cocaine and the painkiller oxycodone with him.

"We both found out we liked painkillers,'' Mallon said.

Rivers also would buy a quantity of cocaine, and sell some to him to defray his own costs, Mallon said.

Kelly Connell said her brother, even though he used bodybuilding steroids, told her Rivers was abusing pills and cocaine.

She thought Rivers was a "friendly guy but a junkie. He was always messed up. You could just tell."

'Very afraid of something'

Home burglarized

Joe and Olga tied the knot on June 7, 2013, on the Caribbean island of St. John, and the bride began talking about having children.

Joe and Olga got married in St. John(Photo: Family photo)

"She was very happy, like glowing inside," Herzog said.

As the summer wore on their home life was blissful, but Olga became worried about Rivers' behavior. "She said he would not come to work or would come later, or was drugged,'' Herzog recalled.

Trouble also came to their condo on July 31 in the form of burglars, county police said. The vandals damaged the front door to get inside, then took jewelry, laptops and other items, police said. No one has been charged.

Herzog said she became alarmed in August and early September when Olga said she was afraid for her and Joe's safety. Herzog tried to get Olga to explain why, but her friend was uncharacteristically evasive.

"She just said she was very afraid of something," said Herzog, who speculated Olga was just rattled by the burglary.

On Sept. 21, Joe and Olga joined a few other couples at FireStone, an indoor/outdoor restaurant on Wilmington's riverfront. They dined, drank and danced in celebration of Olga's 39th birthday 10 days earlier, said one participant who requested anonymity because he knows both families.

Joe and Olga "were fine, completely fine," he said, basking in the joy of a festive night with friends.

Rivers, who worked late that night at the shop, exchanged text messages with Connell a few times as the clock neared midnight.

Connell told Rivers he and his bride planned to stay until about last call at 1 a.m. Rivers said he would be there to help celebrate, but as was his habit, failed to show.

As the guests left the bar, the couple gave them hugs and kisses, explaining they would stay a while longer before heading home.